Pages

Thursday, 27 December 2012

Putting 2013 into context

It makes sense for bloggers to look back over the year and write a post about the ups and downs, and ebb and flow of their birding year. It's fun to reminisce after all, and it's much more pleasant writing a blogpost full of goodies than it is filling space when you've gone out and seen very little.

Accruing these memories is one of the things that makes patching so important to me. I had a few Iceland gulls earlier in the year, not rare of course, and just about annual on patch - but of much higher personal value than the tens I saw up at Peterhead, the few I saw while out on surveys, and even the one that flew past the office window in Falkirk!

Quite often the good memories are forgotten among the rarer stuff too. Looking back through my notebook I recall a tree sparrow in May, the thrill of the chase while digging out and eventually IDing elusive gropper and reed warbler in the autumn, and the rush I got from a couple of black tailed godwits migrating south with a bunch of redshank. All of the above meant more to me than the October RBfly I twitched and the YBW I found shortly after combined!

Why that is I'm not sure...perhaps the rarer stuff is more 'on the radar' than the commoner stuff, if that makes sense. You think about seeing RBflys, barred warbler etc so perhaps it takes the edge off the pleasure of finding them. No-one dreams about finding a tree sparrow (do they?) and as such, the surprise, and therefore the excitement, is heightened.

Unless you want to read about yet more goings on at Girdle ness, why not share your memories of 2012 with us? Just a short paragraph will do, but if you want to waffle on as long as me then thats fine as well. Knowing waht you expect and dont expect helps to put into context all the goodies you'll be finding next year. Email a review of your year to us at patchworkchallenge@gmail.com and we'll get them up onto the blog.

Alternatively, if you already write a blog, send us a link to your yearly review and we'll collate all of these into a blogpost too.